T10 Learning Activity 1: Introduction to Blogging systems PAGE 11

Learning Activity 1: Introduction to Blogging systems Answer these research questions (2 pages, A4, word processed): 1. What does the word "Blog" mean? A blog a blend of the term web log is a type of website or part of a website. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. 2. What is a Blog, what does it do? Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites 3. What types of blog are available? Provide 3 examples (URLs) and front-page screenshots of blogs that cater for a specific demographic. 4. Word (word blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (video blogging) Word:    http://wordblog.com/ Photographs:      http://photoblogs.org/     best site:     http://10mmgalore.com/ Video: http://googlevideo.blogspot.com/  best site: http://crooksandliars.com/ 5. Compile a list of 5 blogging systems and list their strengths and weaknesses. Specifically look at customisability, ease-of-use, is there any advertising? Can I remove any sponsorship branding? http://blog-services-review.toptenreviews.com/ Word Press: Unlike many free blog services, this service does not load your blog with ads and Word Press is all about blogging, they are not trying to double as a social networking site. This service gives you every tool you need to build and promote your blog; additionally, WordPress.com is the only free service we found that gives you referrer stats without having to add a third–party application. Type Pad: Watch your stats, promote your blog and make money with Type Pad, a Six Apart product. Type pad is cheap, at less than $5 per month for the basic membership, yet Type Pad offers advanced tools like statistics, word banning, text file uploads and you can publish an About page. This blog service is comparable to Word Press, but it is not free and they offer few customization features without upgrading to their Pro package. Squarespace: Is still a relative unknown in the blogging community. I think that’s a real shame because this blog service definitely deserves more attention. Squarespace is also one of the few blog services that gives you traffic stats without the need of a third party plug-in, making it especially useful if you are starting a public or business blog. Blogger: Get the word out, with Blogger. Share your life, your product or your ideas for free with this blog service. Blogger has given the world a voice and offers endless template configurations. Blogger is easy to use, yet is flexible enough for advanced users who want to build their own templates. The only drawback to Blogger is that you have to add your own traffic tracking devices if your want to monitor your visitors. MySpace: MySpace is extremely popular and receives a lot of traffic, but is not for the serious blogger. One of the problems with MySpace in terms of blogging, is not many people would want to send their business associates or family to a site that displays the kind of material MySpace users post. MySpace does give you a link to your blog, so you could send your direct link to someone, but if they had to search for your blog it is nearly impossible to find. 6. Can I delete it/ re-name it? Can I use it for commercial purposes? Is there free technical support? http://blog-services-review.toptenreviews.com/ All your answer are here!! 7. is it search-engine-friendly? Can I embed RSS feeds? Can I add a site statistics tool to find out the number of visitors? Is it secure (is it hack-proof?)

T9 Assessment Activity 2: Role Play / Publish to Slideshare

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T9 Learning Activity 2: role play work desk

T9 Assessment Activity 1: Role play as a web design business sole operator (20hrs)

 

T8 Assessment 4: Research Assignment

1. What is readability? Suggest 2 useful online readability testing tools. How easy text is to read www.addedbytes.com/code/readability-score/ www.juicystudio.com/services/readability.php#readingresults 2. What are "Gunning Fog" and "Flesch Index" ? The Gunning Fog Index Readability Formula, or simply called FOG Index, is attributed to American textbook publisher, Robert Gunning The Gunning’s Fog Index (or FOG) Readability Formula Step 1: Take a sample passage of at least 100-words and count the number of exact words and sentences. Step 2: Divide the total number of words in the sample by the number of sentences to arrive at the Average Sentence Length (ASL). Step 3: Count the number of words of three or more syllables that are NOT (i) proper nouns, (ii) combinations of easy words or hyphenated words, or (iii) two-syllable verbs made into three with -es and -ed endings. Step 4: Divide this number by the number or words in the sample passage. For example, 25 long words divided by 100 words gives you 25 Percent Hard Words (PHW). Step 5: Add the ASL from Step 2 and the PHW from Step 4. Step 6: Multiply the result by 0.4. The mathematical formula is: Grade Level = 0.4 (ASL + PHW) where, ASL = Average Sentence Length (i.e., number of words divided by the number of sentences) PHW = Percentage of Hard Words The underlying message of The Gunning Fog Index formula is that short sentences written in Plain English achieve a better score than long sentences written in complicated language. The ideal score for readability with the Fog index is 7 or 8. Anything above 12 is too hard for most people to read. For instance, The Bible, Shakespeare and Mark Twain have Fog Indexes of around 6. The leading magazines, like Time, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal average around 11. 3. What are the 4 distinct writing styles? Creative writing. This can be a story, a poem, a play, or anything else you chooses to make up. Creative writing is fun because you can use all of your imagination. Explanation. This is also called expository writing. It is used when the writer wants to share information with the reader. It can be how to put something together or how to solve a problem. Clear writing is the key. The reader of an explanation should come away informed, not confused. Personal essay. This is a written monologue. In a personal essay, you can tell about something you believe in or have experienced. Clear, organized language is still important. Persuasive essay. This is a written way to try to convince the reader that the writer’s opinion is the correct one. It should include examples that support the writer’s opinion. It may also include examples to show why opposite opinions are wrong 4. Describe writing techniques such as drafting, story boarding and name software tools that can assist in these techniques. Drafting: Drafting is the drawing of objects to scale, usually a top view, main view and side view Story Boarding: Graphic organizers such as a series of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing Software tools: word illustrator Photoshop excel bubble.us piece of paper 5. What is Active Voice/ Passive Voice and when should you use them? Write a short sentence demonstrating each style. When the subject is the agent or doer of the action, the verb is in the active voice. When the subject is the patient, target or undergoer of the action, it is said to be in the passive voice. Example: Active: The army killed the civilian Passive: The civilian was killed by the army 6. What's a Cliché? What are the pros and cons of using them? Cliché : A phrase which has been used too often, and has become meaningless Pros: People understand them quicker Gives the main character significance Easy to form a story line around Isolate the character mentally and physically Cons: Repetitive Sometimes unnecessary Creates lack of care/appreciation Predictable. Boring 7. What's a caption? What's the characteristic of a "good" caption. Find a caption you like and present it here. Include the image. What's a caption? subtitle: translation of foreign dialogue of a movie or TV program; usually displayed at the bottom of the screen provide with a caption, as of a photograph or a drawing brief description accompanying an illustration Good caption: 1. Identify the people who make the photograph 2. Describe what is happening in the photograph 3. Inform where the event occurred, and when 4. Explain the background, if need be 5. It must be written in the present tense Caption The Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh lights the lamp to inaugurate the exhibition "The Master's Strokes: Art of Rabindranath Tagore", at National Gallery of Modern Art, in New Delhi on May 9, 2010 – PIB Photo. 8. Suggest formatting/ layout/ typesetting techniques to improve presentation (for any medium). Grid is a set of guidelines, able to be seen in the design process and invisible to the end-user/audience, for aligning and repeating elements on a page Template is more rigid. A template involves repeated elements mostly visible to the end-user/audience. Using a template to lay out elements usually involves less graphic design skill than that which was required to design the template. Kerning and Tracking Alignment Measure Leading Ligatures Rag Widows and Orphans Hyphens, En-dashes and Em-dashes 9. What is the "inverted pyramid" in the context of writing? Most readers have neither the time nor the desire to read every word of every story in a newspaper. By using the summary lead, the JO focuses the reader’s attention on the news, arouses the reader’s interest and allows the reader to swiftly skim important facts. 10. Write 1 example of each of the 3 registers used in writing. Hint Write for your audience: Who is your audience Write for the medium: Less than 20% of users read word-by-word. Most just scan text. Allocate, collaborate and iterate: Get others to read and review your work to ensure that it is clear and conveys an accurate message for its intended audience 11. List 5 things to consider when writing for the web/ screen. Describe how writing for the web differs from traditional writing. Know your audience/ Decide why you are writing/ Headlines /Upper case / Choose the right words Web pages have to employ scannable text Highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and colour are others) Meaningful sub-headings (not "clever" ones) Bulleted lists one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph) the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion Halve the word count (or less) than conventional writing Credibility is important since it is unclear who is behind information on the Web and whether a page can be trusted High-quality graphics, good writing, and use of outbound hypertext links. Links to other sites show that the authors have done their homework and are not afraid to let readers visit other sites. Also, credibility suffers when users clearly see that the site exaggerates. 12. What does semantics mean in the context of writing html? Why is it important to write semantically correct html? In English, the word semantic means "of or relating to meaning." In the science of linguistics, semantics is more explicit: It's the study of meaning based on the historical and psychological significance of words and terms While the academic study of markup vocabularies can be thought of as a form of linguistics, the real-world practice of marking up documents semantically follows the first definition; in markup, semantics is concerned with the meaning of an element, and how that element describes the content it contains. This issue was always meant to be part of HTML, but the hacking of HTML for presentational purposes made short order of any semblance of semantic purity within the language. Chris, that was hard.....Can we go back to the drawing part!! Vincent

T8 Assessment 3: Summarise a podcast

Assignment 3 Summarise a podcast Pod cast from: Triple J Featuring: Sandy with Dr Alastair Reynolds & Dr Karl Kruszelnicki Topics: Space/ Space elevators/ Black Holes and Time travel Pod Link: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/science/podcast/scienceontriplej/scienceontriplej20100909.mp3 Pod cast on Space elevator/Nanotubes: (Nanotubes have been constructed with length-to-diameter ratio of up to 132,000,000:1) Dr Karl and Dr Al start of talking about Space opera. Which are grand vistas of space from galaxy to galaxy, covering time cloning, modifying people into different shapes and cultures. Machine people and conjoining people through there brain. Also weapons and toys. Today the first question is: Space elevators. A space elevator is sending a satellite into geo stationery orbit, then attach a piece of string to the satellite, then sending the string to earth, then bolt it to the ground. Then you can go into space up the string for the cost of electricity. You need a piece of string that can support itself for 36,000 kilometres long! Steel can only support itself for 5 kilometres long. Carbon Nanotubes can do the job on paper; the trick is to spool out a Nanotube 36,000 kilometres long with no floors in it. At present this can’t be done. Only small scale whisker lengths have been made so far. But we are closer now than ten years ago. Podcast. cont... Second question is on: Distance from one side of the universe to the other. A light year, is the measurement used for such vast distances, In say that a light year is the distance, light travels in a year. The light from the sun takes 8 minutes to get to the earth, 4 hours to Pluto. It would take humans years, to reach such vast distances. The universe started as a spec of infinite density about 12 billion years ago and has been expanding ever since. One calculation is 40 billion years. In a period called super inflation and the guy who did that was Guth. The radius of the universe is 40 billion years but it is believed to be smaller 13.7 billion years, as the fabric of space time expanded faster than the speed of light.

T8 Learning Activity 8: Online Writing Tools

Google Docs: You can easily do all the basics, including making bulleted lists, sorting by columns, adding tables, images, comments, formulas, changing fonts and more and it's free. This is perhaps the most frequently mentioned processor of its kind, simply for the fact that it is a Google based product. Google Docs is quite capable of replacing virtually all common tasks that your typical desktop-based whiteboard can manage. Zoho Writer: Is a Web- based online office suite containing word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, note-taking, wikis, CRM, project management, invoicing and other applications developed by ZOHO Corporation Additional products, such as spreadsheets and presentations, were incorporated later into Zoho Software utilities are hosted on remote servers rather than on personal computers. The user accesses the utilities via a web browser. This application is superb in all sorts of ways. It runs neck-and-neck with Google Docs as features go, yet it’s has the added appeal of being an independent option. In a manner of speaking, Zoho Writer has big talent without the big title. Word Press: Is an open source CMS, often used as a blog publishing application powered by PHP and MySQL. It has many features including a plug-in architecture and a templating system. Used by over 12% of the 1,000,000 biggest websites, Word Press is the most popular CMS in use today. Renowned for its simplicity, openness and extensibility. WordPress.com is a hosted blogging service of immense popularity largely because it’s free. Twitter: The most popular and most recognized micro blogging solution presently in play, Twitter has many functions. It’s used as a marketing engine. It’s used to talk to “followers.” It’s even used to chronicle poems and verse, as well as brief novella-like inventions. NYTimes reporter Matt Richtel is one figure who employed the platform for creative ends. Think Free Office: Think Free Office includes a word processor (Write), a spreadsheet (Calc), a presentation program (Show), and a WYSIWYG HTML and blog editor (Note). Think Free Office reads and writes to Microsoft Office file formats (.doc, .xls, and .ppt). Think Free Office has a look and feel similar to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, providing a degree of familiarity to new users. It doesn’t get spoken about very often, but Think Free Write application is able to swim with bigger fish if it’s tasked to do so. You may like or dislike it for various reasons, but technically speaking, it’s quite fortuitous.