December 6th
On Dec. 6th the class met in the computer room and the people with ideas shared them with us. We then chose the people we wanted to work with and this group was formed by Wurood, Dawah, Donald and Rajendra. In the beginning everyone shared their ideas. One idea was for a website about city tech clubs and another was an online tutoring guide for courses at city tech. We ended up choosing the latter, making a website to help city tech students find quick study tips for their math and music classes. After sharing our thoughts and opinions on the project we exchanged numbers just in case we needed to contact each other. We also started on typing out our proposal and include our intentions, goals to achieve and how we will go about creating this service we plan to provide.
December 11th
The second time we met up in class each member of the group chose a course and started to research and look for sources which are easy to understand and include videos for those who learn better visually. The sources we chose are MAT 1372, MAT 1375, Mat 1475, MUS 1202, MUS 1203 and MUS 1204. While we were researching we realized that many of the sources can be used for all of our topics. For example, patrickjmt.com included lessons that can be used for MAT 1372, 1375 and 1475 and we all started using links from it. Later, we realized that each person needed to find at least one source of their own for their topic. Each person then started searching for their own source which took a while because it was hard to find a website that was easy to understand and accurate.
December 13th
After finding a source, came the process of putting together the website. There was a lot to learn about the creating the pages and arranging them in the right order. Editing the website was difficult in the beginning and it took us a while to understand how to get it all done. Several issues that we encountered was changing the theme of the website, creating hyperlinks, create sub-groupings and drop down menus, and even figuring out why our text only shows up after being highlighted. We figured out that the text was defaulted in white and that is why the text only shows up when we highlighted the text. The drop down menus apply only when we pick a “parent” page.
Each of us continued to pull several sources for our assigned courses and verify that each source supplies the most efficient, most accurate, and most easiest to understand.
December 18th
Today, we are finishing up the final touches and visuals for our website, such as, pictures, backgrounds and illustrations. We slected a few from many choices because they allow the users and students to make a connection to our service. We decided on a heading picture of basic classroom with a chalkboard, a table, and a bookworm. This picture represents that our website still resembles a classroom environment and allows students to learn where knowledge is usually given. We represent a digital classroom for all New York City College of Technology students. Our background is a picture of a “grade”, A+, and this grade represents that our service and information should increase a student’s ability to receive the desired grade in any course they take. We also had another option, which was to display the logo of New York City College of Technology, but then the background seemed to have overwhelmed the appearance of our website. Were trying to create a simple, but yet appealing website to our students and users, because we don’t want our students to feel distracted and we also wanted to connect with our students in a way that we both are aiming for the same goals. On several categories, we added visuals to help students with their studies, such as the Math 1475: Calculus I, we used visual examples, tables for quick study tips, and introductions. For MAT 1372 we also added a picture which basically sums up the concept of probability and satatistics in a fun and simple way.
In addition to finding the visuals, we did encounter the problem of why the visuals wouldn’t show up on the background that we chose, however Donald solved that issue by spending quite some time and fustration in the admin menus and finally found an alternative option for dragging and dropping/uploading pictures to our webpage.
