Alex's+Progress-+Diary+Entries

=Diary Entries = ==My Involvement/ Discussions/ Descion Making on creating our wiki ==

__**24/2**__
Our group, including Chris, Richard and I decided to set up 3 pages on our wiki space to use for our diary entries. This is because it seemed the most suitable for our usage, although we did change our minds a couple of times. There were other programs we were going to use, one was called ‘Twitter’ which is similar to ‘Face book’ and we could have recorded our entries using this program. Another appropriate program we could have used was ‘Google Groups’ where we could set up our own profile and write our diary entries as ‘blogs’. Chris and I decided to use Twitter, as it was simple, easy to use and we had already set up profiles for it. However, we soon learned that it limited us to quite a small number of characters and would be annoying to use. Chris and I then agreed to use Google Groups for our diary entries. Richard disagreed with this idea as it was just another program we had to ‘sign up for’ and we were already loaded up with many different accounts for many different programs, so he provided us with another very useful suggestion. He thought that we could just use our wiki space to record our diary entries. He justified this by explaining that then we wouldn’t have to use lots of other different sites and we could just keep with the one familiar program. Good idea Richard! Chris and I thought this was a very good plan, so we made our final decision to do it this way. Thinking about it now, it does seem a lot easier to do it this way, rather than have to use many unfamiliar sites, all with different accounts.

__26/2__
Today, just to keep ourselves up to date, i added 3 pages onto our wikispace, one for each of us to write our diary entries. I also managed the wiki a little, by adding a title to the home page. Nothing to complex, because i wasn't with Richard and Chris as i was doing it to catch up; for homework, so i didn't want to update it too much without them. I'm hoping that next class we can assign everyone a certain section to do which will slowly improve our wiki, because i don't want it too seem like i am doing all the work and taking over. The boys need to have some imput into this project also.

__**27/2**__
Today Richard, Chris and I discussed what sections of the wikispace we will each undertake, and what we will be doing. Richard came up with a good idea, to include a guest book on our wikispace, so users of our sight can comment on how useful it was to them. Chris decided he would create a new page of class notes, were we can store our design brief, our diagrams and our planning outline of the stages of our wikispace. I decided to create a page for a calendar and include all relevant dates and events from the school.

In my spare i began to create the calendar. It was quite difficult, as i thought the the only way possible was to do it manually, by drawing up a table for each month. It took me the whole spare period just to draw up one month! It didn't work very well either because the columns/ rows were all different sizes and it looked very messy. I will have to think about this and find another way around this problem.

__**3/3**__
Today, Mr.Fenwick proposed a better way of putting a calendar on our wikispace. He said we should do it through Google Groups. I began to look and work out a way to do it. I realised i had to do it through g-mail which meant i had to make another account. After trying about 100 times (bit of an exaggeration) without being successful (as it kept saying i had an existing account already, but when i used my old account it didn't work) i asked chris if he could make an account that i could access. He did so and i found a link that i could put on our wikispace that would lead the the google calendar. After going through quite a few small complexations and getting very frustrated about it, it turned out very well. Thanks fennaz!

10/3
Project management skills; gantt charts

12/3
Completed project management skills


 * __13/3__**

Nothing has been updated on our wikispace in a while because we've been focusing on the theory components of our project. It's only in the last couple of days that our wikispace has been tidied up and more links and pages have been added to the navigation (thanks to chris's co-operation) of the page. Our charts and reports have been added to our wiki so everyone can acces them and update them and also as a back up, in case my memory stick (where all of our theory is located) or computer crashes. Chris also added links (provided from the site diagram) to the pages we need to include in our project, for example the recording page and school topic discussion page. In our spare period i decided to use this time to work on our space. I looked at the gantt chart we drew up and saw that this weekend i needed to embed a chat room onto our site for topic discussion, so that is what i went out to do. I didn't want to use the same one os the other class because that would have been too easy and a way of getting out of it so i went about attempting it myself. I noticed the widget icon at the top of the page and used that. I tried every chat and IM, 2 of them i fiddled around with for a short while before trying another one (the 'yackpack' and 'skype' were the chats/IM's i couldn't get to work) and i knew how 'meebo' worked because of the other class so i decided to embed 'Gabbly'. It's a bit messy and it does have annoying advertisments bit it does the trick and is relatively easy to use. While i was doing this chris set about making a topic discussion page. After talking about what we were doing and how each of us were doing it we decided to just link the two pages together. Instead of having a chat room to 'chat' we would call it the topic discussion page where kids and teachers can talk about their school work or ask any questions with others that are online. After thinking and talking with Richard we thought a guest book would be too hard and 'olden day' to put into our site. If we get time we might include a message board on our site where people can leave comments about what they thought of the page, any improvements, questions etc.

__**15/3**__

Today i added a new page called 'documentation'. All of our theory used to be contained in the page 'class notes' and it was hard to find as it's not specifically class notes because it's not apart of the actual site for the public to view. Now it is under 'documentation'.

__**17/3**__
Today I updated our page by creating subject links in the class notes page. I made one for each subject so class notes and information about each subject can be placed on these pages, so they are easy to find. I also found a problem with the documentation part of our wikispace. We have uploaded our reports onto wikispace through microsoft word so we are all able to access it. This means that when we want to view these documents we can but we are not able to edit or add any information onto them because it is on wikispace. So when we want to edit and add information we have to do it through the copy which is on my memory stick and put it onto wikispace every time something is changed. This means that Chris and Richard don't have access to a changeable copy so they can't add to any of the information. We'll have to find a way around this.

__**19/7**__
Today i explained to Mr. Fenwick our problem and he suggested a solution. He explained that through google groups we can put our documentation where it can be edited and changed by anyone with access to the account. First we had to make a general account that our class all knows so we are all able to access it. Then once the files are added to our 'gmail' we then had to create a link in wikispace to this site where we can view and change our information. Richard and i did this quite easily, after a bit of an explanation from Mr. Fenwick. We were able to publish the documents to the internet so people without access to our account that want to use or view the information can do so without having an account. I also upgraded our wikispace for a 30 day trial to the 'super package, which incudes: the google ads being turned off, 5GB total storage 50MB per- file maximum size and many other extra aspects. After these 30 days the trial will end and we can choose to pay keep the package by paying $20 per month or just go back to the basic free package. I added a link called 'other' where i embeded links to an online soduku and crossword that students can use easily.

__**26/3**__
Today i added 'meebo' to the chat room page instead of 'gabbly' because 'gabbly' is messy and meebo is neat and well structured. I also created a page for topic discussion. Even though Chris and I earlier on talked about linking the two pages to one i noticed at the top of every page there is a discussion tab. In this discussion tab you can post messages that you may have onto the page, and it gives us the option to monitor these messages. So i created another page called topic discussion merely to show our users that on any page they access they can leave a message by using this discussion tab at the top of the page.

__31/3__
Today Chris and I recorded Mr. Fenwick talking and tried to add it to wikispace. We saved the sound file somehwere but then could not locate it, so we went to the control panel and into the text-to-speech program. We typed something about the wikispace into it and it said over the speakers of the computer in a robot like voice. We need recorded it and added it to our wikispace.

__2/4__
Today we had a substitue teachers so we wanted to get the rest of the task completed. We worked on diagrams and answering the last few questions. We all took taks for homework so we could complete the project. I'm quite happy with the way we worked at the end of the task, each working as a team.