IT 111 Week 5 Podcast

The screen snapshot on the left is from the ColorMaker - a helpful web-based tool for picking good colors for a web page or site. I encourage you to use it when selecting colors for your final web site project. It, along with some other helpful sites are linked from the Class Links page on the course web site.

This podcast includes an overview of Chapter 4, which covers colors and images, and Assignment 4. Even though this isn't a web graphics class, I want students to be able to edit images so they look good and download quickly on the web. If you don't have an image editing program like Photoshop Elements or PaintShop Pro on your computer, you can download and use Picasa- a free image editing program by Google. If you're working on a Mac, you'll probably want to use iPhoto instead.

Finally, in order to complete the Chapter 4 updates on your case study, you'll need to get the Textbook Student Data Files from WebCT.

Listen to the Week 5 Podcast (6:55 minutes)
Or, if you prefer, read the transcript. (PDF)

IT 111 Week 4 Podcast

The screen snapshot to the left shows the Seattle PI front page story on online learning which features North Seattle Community College. If you missed it yesterday (1-22), you can read it online.

Anyone for a "virtual office hour?" If you're having problems with an assignment, contact me via email or Meebo and we can set up a time to talk. I'm using a program called Gizmo Project that allows me to receive calls on my computer for a small annual fee ($36/year). We can discuss your problems in real time and work together to figure out how to fix them.

This podcast also discusses my grading strategy and gives some tips for Assignment 3.

Listen to the podcast (4:27 minutes)
Or, if you prefer, read the transcript. PDF.

Is anybody listening? Feel free to leave a comment.

IT 111 Podcast #2 for Winter 2008

This podcast took a bit longer to produce than I expected. I'm still getting software installed and tested on my new computer and it's been very time consuming.

The main focus of this podcast is Assignment 2 - your first web coding assignment. Get an early start on it since you'll need to download and install a few programs to complete all the tasks. All this software is listed and linked on the Tips Page which is where you can find the ePacket, too. Make sure you watch the tutorials (found on the Tutorials Page). They should help you a lot as you work on the assignment.

In addition to the short movie above, there are some excellent resources for Chapter 2 on the Class Links Page. One of them is the W3Schools XHTML Reference - a list of all the XHTML elements or tags and how they are used. There's also a web page that has plain English explanations for the error messages you might receive when you validate your pages.

Listen to the second podcast (4 minutes)
Or, if you prefer, read the transcript. (PDF)

Feel free to leave a comment!

IT 111 Week 1 Podcast for Winter 2008

I'll be producing a short weekly podcast for our class this quarter and this first podcasts explains why and how I'm using them.

One of my favorite Christmas presents was a flip video camera, pictured in the image on the left. It takes decent videos that are easy to upload to YouTube or just watch on your computer. Find out more about it by going to the Flip Video web site. My welcome video was recorded with it.

Listen to the Week 1 Podcast. (2:52 minutes)
Read the transcript if you prefer. PDF

Feel free to leave a comment!