Web Development – Introduction
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Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the long-time standard for creating web pages. That grew into the eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML). The newest draft is HTML5 – some people like to drop the 5; but many like to distinguish from old and new. It is like when our Business Computer Programming became Microcomputer Information Technology. That was important because we were trying to differentiate from a mainframe-based curriculum to one of microcomputers (does anyone still call them that?). Because PCs are no longer the “new” thing, we dropped the “Micro” and became Information Technology. I think the same will happen with HTML/HTML5.
I was teaching classes that used gopher, usenet, and telenet — before the graphical browsers. AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy were the three big players that brought the GUI browsers to the public. Yes, I did use Mosaic, Netscape, and now use mainly Firefox (sometimes Chrome) — IE, only if nothing else works (or for Microsoft sites).
It is important to keep current with what is happening in the IT area, and Web Development is no exception. The W3C is a good site to monitor about what is going on with the standards. One of the big topics is Universal Access — Section 508 of the Federal rehabilitation Act makes us very aware that we need to keep accessibility in mind in our web page design.
No matter how a website looks — people come to it for good, reliable, accurate information.CONTENT IS KING! But, good design is very important, too. It is especially important to be able to find the content you are looking for.
“I need a picture of the knee to put in my Anatomy and Physiology report. I’ll just right-click it, save image as,…there! I’ve got it!” WRONG — unless the content-creator and owner has given you permission — you are not allowed to do that without correctly citing the work and following copyright law. Creative Commons was developed for the kind of sharing that the web encourages.
The internet does not exist with webpages alone, but a huge computer network is involved. This network consists of computers, storage devices, routers, switches, etc. The connection of your computer through its browser to another computer on the internet is called the client-server model. The server has information that is transferred and interpreted by your browser to display web pages.
Google Course Builder
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course-builder – Course Builder – Google Project Hosting
Ready to serve up a MOOC (Massively Open Online Course)? Google will allow you to do just that! From offering their first MOOC, Google has opened up their learning management system that they used for their own MOOC Power Searching with Google, and provided Course Builder to anyone who wants to build a MOOC. What are the implications of MOOC to higher education? Aren’t MOOCs great marketing tools? Aren’t they great community service resources? Students can and do learn from each as much or more than from their instructor.
Carnegie Mellon University Open Learning Initiative
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Open Learning Initiative | Open Learning Initiative
Carnegie Mellon joins the ranks of the Open Learning Initiative along with the Khan Academy, MIT OpenCourseware, and the great iTunesU courses.
For the lifelong learner, these provide courses with “no instructors, no credits, and no charge.”
This is another one to put on your “watch list.”
The Open Learning Initiative – Profiles of Next Generation Learning
Got an iPad and I’m Ready to Go!
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Our department was given an iPad to use in order to share its educational application with our colleagues. Thankfully, it ended up in my hands…and I’m not letting go!
Since I already own an iPhone, the transition to the iPad was an easy one. I noticed a few standard things missing from the standard iPhone configuration: clock(timer), calculator, weather. I found free (ad) apps, and added those right away.
Next, Zite was recommended to me by Kathy Conway. It is a filtered magazine where you get your own personalized magazine based upon your selected interests. As you read and rate articles, more filtered articles appear. How about handing the iPad to a student to pick out an article of interest and read to or summarize it for the class?
I, of course, had to add the WordPress app to type this post!
Google+ Hangouts
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Hangouts is another new feature of Google+ that has many applications to learning, especially for online classes. Many times, in an online class, students want to meet up synchronously. This new Google tool allows just that. The “face-to-face” aspect of a traditional classroom is accomplished by the use of video cameras — up to nine people. Give it a try!
Get notified When Changes are Made on the Web
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I have been using Google Alerts for many years — I have my name and email address set as alerts sot that anytime something is posted using them, I get an email message alert. I strongly recommend doing this to see what is being posted about “you” on the web.
In viewing the Archive page of my favorite podcast, Security Now!, I noticed that they use http://www.changedetection.com/ to let their listeners get notified of a new episode.
Check out these two tracking tools to see if you might have a use for them.
Create Sticky Notes with HTML5 and CSS3 – Pretty easy, and fun!
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Using this tutorial, you can create some fun looking Sticky Notes. Note: not all browsers will support this, yet. I am using the latest version of Mozilla (my kids call this Mozzerella) Firefox, and it works just fine!
Find the tutorial here: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css-techniques/create-a-sticky-note-effect-in-5-easy-steps-with-css3-and-html5/
Here is my example: http://perceptivepetal.com/stickynotes.html
Enjoy!
1046: Type was not found or was not a compile-time constant
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We were getting this error when trying to define and instantiate a page saved in the library as a symbol.
There was no linkage section that indicated to “Export to Actionscript.”
There was an indication of that, too — in the Linkage column of the library, there was no class name.
The fix, right-click on the symbol in the library and update the linkage section to say “Export to Actionscript.”
The problem — had to fix the Trackpad settings on the MacBook Pro to know what a right-click was!
Creating a Flash Document that Animates a graphic with Actionscript to Stop the Animation and a Replay Button
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Creating your first Flash Professional CS5 document | Adobe Developer Connection
This is a great tutorial to jump into creating Flash documents. I started out by following the instructions and creating a Logo with my name.
I then decided to create an animated “Mickey.” I did get stuck on the step that wanted me to Right-Click the symbol I created and select “Create Motion Tween.” No menu came up for me, but I did find that I could accomplish the task by selection Motion Tween from the Insert menu.
When coding the Actionscript for the replay button, make sure you are on the action layer, frame 1 in the timeline.
I did have an error in my code (left out the : before the void). It gave me a compilation error that said something about a missing {.
Community Colleges (and Me!) in the news!
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They came to take some video of our classroom to do the story for our chancellor. I am in the last few seconds of this…
keep looking »