WEEK 2

We started this week by making a brochure in Microsoft Publisher. Publisher is a great tool for students because it is in nearly every classroom and it is easy to use.

From about Year 5 onwards, I used Publisher all the time for school projects. I found it much more fun than word because I could had much more freedom in designing the page. I guess I have always been attracted to the look and feel of things and not just the content.

It begs the question, with all these aesthetically pleasing websites today, is there an over consumption of look and not content. I think there is a challenge in schools to encourage students to embrace all aspects of understanding. While design is important, the content is also imperative.


Greg told us we could use Publisher to make our e-portfolios. I feel like I'm a bit beyond Publisher. There are so many tools out there, so I have decided to purchase the education version of DREAMWEAVER. Dreamweaver is a web development application by Adobe. It enables non-programmers to create and design web sites without using code. This is great for me, because I don't know anything about using code.

While researching Dreamweaver, I came across a couple of Content Management Systems such as Joomla and WordPress. I'm still trying to work out exactly what they are. On the Wordpress website, it says it is an open source project.

HISTORY OF OPEN-SOURCE

According to wikipedia (which is one of the most famous open-source projects), Open-source projects have been around for at least a hundred years, obviously well before the rise of the internet. The US automobile industry was dominated by an open-source type operation. The term open-source is used to describe a product of any kind that uses multiple collaborators and is democratically run.

We had a look at some example e-portfolios. Greg told us that sometimes schools will look at them, and sometimes they won't, but its good to have one to give to them at the end of the interview. I think it is a handy way of storing your information, rather using lots of paper each time you have an interview.

Also, e-portfolios are used in schools to chart a student’s progress. Each year, the teacher will record the student’s work and add to the e-portfolio. This can be used to inform teachers of the next year of a student’s achievement and progress. I think it's a great idea.

DREAM WEAVER

I downloaded the trial version of Dreamweaver myself. I think I was a little bit over-confident because I thought that I would be able to adopt it like any other Adobe software. However, dreamweaver is quite an advanced tool that requires some basic programming knowledge, which I don’t have. The way that you build a website is that you have 2 sides of the program. The left side is the programming bit, and the right side is the visual representation of the programming. To be honest, I found it a bit overwhelming and decided to use Powerpoint in order to complete my e-portfolio. Eventually, I would love to be able to use dreamweaver.