Website Design Class Conquered!

Here is the link if you would like to check out my site!

http://turing.iuk.edu/~n245-7/project/

I'm not sure how long it will be available on this server since it is through the university, but until they remove it - this is the link! I think future plans for my site include transfering the artwork images to a slideshow format rather than thumbnails. As thumbnails the whole page has to be re-arranged to add or remove work; as a slideshow the only thing I would have to change would be the slideshow! I also plan to update te artwork shown on here with better quality images and more recent work. Much of my high school work is here and I would like to tailor the viewing experience more to recent, more illustration oriented work to attract book illustration jobs!

Update on Website Course

I'm still here clicking away on what will hopefully be a good investment of time and money. This course has been more challenging than I originally expected it to be but I am happy so far with the results. Originally I hoped to be able to share the steps to creating a website here as I learned them...turns out that was a pretty naive idea! I will tell you that The textbook I am using (pictured below) is very helpful and easy to navigate. It steps out the Dreamweaver software functions one by one. If you already own the Dreamweaver software and are having difficulty figuring it out, this book will help!



If you do not own the software already I would reccomend taking the IUK N245 course. The cost of tuition for the 3 credit course is not much more than the retail cost of the Adobe design suite of programs that you are able to download free as a student AND you get the instruction to go with it.

I am beginning phase two of my site heatherfouts.com As soon as I have it viewer friendly I will post the URL here! Thanks everyone for being patient! Oh~ also new artwork coming soon...

Have a Happy Holiday!

Back to School!

Where did the Summer go? I have a lot of changes to report and some good news, too! I am enrolled this semester in an intro to website design course. The accelerated 8 week course begins October 19th and I will try to report what I am learning as I go. Hopefully anyone else out there thinking about building their own website can/will benefit from my experience. I am very intimidated by the task of learning the Adobe Dreamweaver software AND trying to cram in as much knowledge of XHTML and CSS into my head before beginning the course. I was so doubtful after reading the class syllabus that I e-mailed the instructor to make sure this course was going to be a reasonable endeavor for me. He sent me a pretty optimistic response. I hope I can keep up and do well....we'll see!

My good news is that over the Summer I was officially accepted to the master's program in Art Education at IU Bloomington. This fall will be my last semester as an IU Kokomo student. I plan to begin coursework online and via some IUK classes then transfer to Bloomington when the distance learning options run out.

Meantime...watch for updates soon as I begin my journey into website design!

W200 Happy Ending

Well I just completed my last assignment for W200 Using Computers in Education. I have really enjoyed this class. I'll continue to update my blog from time to time as I learn new cool technology goodies. Until my next post~Have a great Summer!

W200 Critical Thinking

This is our last module of work for my W200 Using Computers in Education course. We were assigned two articles to read, had to write 6-8 paragraphs on the topic ourselves, then had to create a wiki to share the information on. Next week we'll combine our thoughts into a single document using Google docs.
A wiki is a shared workspace where a group of people can upload files, create agendas, lists, assignments, etc. These documents can then be read, edited, and added to by all individuals belonging to the group. If you're interrested, my group's research topic was Questioning Technology Use. Please feel free to visit my wiki at:

http://visualartsgirl.pbworks.com/

W200 RSS Feeds

Ok. Back when we were creating our blogs for this class I somehow figured out how to add the RSS feed option to my blog. I knew it had something to do with subscribing to my blog but didn't fully understand what that meant. This week's assignment cleared all of that up for me. I decided to attach the YouTube video our instructor provided us so that my non-W200 classmate followers may learn as we did:

Our assignment was to create a reader using iGoogle, Yahoo!, or our blog and subscribe to five posts. I used iGoogle for the assignment because I'm obsessively picky about keeping my online accounts as organized as possible. Since our instructor mentioned we would use iGoogle for a future assignment I thought it would be a good site to "contain" this material. I did, however apply what I learned to my Yahoo! homepage, it now comes up with the latest news from defleppard.com. (smile)
I was surprised how many of the websites I bookmarked last week did not have RSS feeds! I thought, oh this assignment will be easy! Just pull up some bookmarks from last week's assignment and subscribe? Wrong. I had to search for new sites and blogs because most of what I bookmarked did not have feeds. I even bookmarked a site called Art Education 2.0 which is supposed to be all about how Web 2.0 propels Art Education......no feed. Bummer. Anyhow, my new RSS feed websites and blogs have been added to my delicious site. They'll be the ones tagged "rss."
I think using feeds will definitely be something I continue. The sites added for this assignment to the iGoogle account are still new to me, but in time I'll decide if they are sites I need to have constant update on. While "playing around" on my Yahoo! site looking for how to add feeds I did discover how to edit the content on my homepage. I can now read my facebook and Twitter updates on my homepage when I sign in. Like the feeds, its another time-saving application. That was not the first time an assignment in this class has lead to the discovery of other useful things!

W200 Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is a method of storing, organizing, and sharing websites via the use of "tags" which make them easy to retrieve. If you have ever sent someone a link to a website you found interesting, you have participated in social bookmarking. For this assignment we explored Yahoo!'s free bookmarking service Delicious. We set up our own page and saved 20+ bookmarks of sites that will assist us as we move forward in our careers. I have added a gadget at the bottom of my blog page that lists my Delicious tags and invites you to subscribe to my network. Here is the link to my Delicious page if you would like to check it out:

http://www.delicious.com/visualartsgirl