Thursday 19th June

Just a reminder that we have Copyright Trivia running from 9:15 this morning (for those partaking); then at 11:30am we have Guest Speaker Russ Weakley telling us tales from A Day in the Life of a Web Developer!

As a side note, for those of you wishing to explore Drupal more over the holidays, there are a few entry level articles/tutorials to be found here: http://learnbythedrop.com/archives

See you all in the morning,

Ray

Tuesday 10th June 2008

This mornings Workshop will start a bit later than usual. There is a presentation happening in the back Call Off Room, so we will not be able to wander in there until after 10.30

Today we are going to have a mini intro to Javascript, but nothing too technical - I guarantee this will not be taxing!

We are going to have a brief look at a few Meta Tags (as we haven't covered them in great detail as yet), and a couple of HTML techniques and tricks.

Then we are going to install Lightbox - http://www.lokeshdhakar.com/projects/lightbox2/ - a great, free, easy to install and use Javascript that unobtrusively sits above our HTML. Starting with a plain, vanilla flavoured HTML image gallery, we will add Lightbox to bring it to life.

We will probably need around an hour to one and a half hours to get through this workshop. The remainder of the time before and after is available for you to work on your own projects. As I said, its not an overly technical workshop so hope you can all make it!

COPYRIGHT TRIVIA

Below are some questions to start you off on your copyright adventure which will culminate in Copyright Trivia, on 19th June [week 17] This activity will give you most of the evidence you need to achieve competency in the Learning Unit: CUSADM08A Address Copyright Requirements. Please read everything carefully before starting. There are more than the questions on this blog! Read to the end of the blog entry.....

GAME 'RULES'
First, find 1-2 other people to form a team of 2-3 [max is 3] for the Copyright Trivia day. Then find out as much info as you can about copyright and web sites/web design.Use the questions and sites below to guide you through the Labyrinth of Copyright issues.

What is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act?
Who owns the copyright of a website you design?
Why is copyright important?
How do you apply for copyright of a site?
Basically the law says that you are not allowed to copy someone’s work without their permission- but there are 3 exceptions to the rule. What are they?
What copyright information do you have to put on your websites?
Who are the following people and what do they have to do with copyright?Rick Boucher, Prof Henry Perritt, Prof Lawrence Lessig
What is copyright?
What are the requirements to copyright a product?
What happens when someone breaks copyright?
How long does copyright last?

Is everything subjected to copyright laws? If not, what isn't?
What are the following bodies and what do they have to do with copyright laws?
WIPO
WPPT
WCT


USEFUL WEBSITES:

For information about digital copyright issues, check out the Australian Government Department of Broadband Communications, and the Digital Economy. There are several copyright issues covered from their site and linked sites.
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/laca/copyrightenforcement/contents.htm or
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/home/intellectual_property


Regulations regarding the use of visual material that is not yours:
http://www.copyright.org.au/information/specialinterest/visart.htm

The Australian Copyright Council provides an online service to inform people of copyright regulations and to lobby the government for fair copyright practices:
http://www.copyright.org.au/index.htm


Creative Commons is a website that enables web developers [and others involved in electronic communications] to publish material that is protected from copyright infringement. They issue licences for copyright protections and inform you of what is copyright and what is not.
http://creativecommons.org/

DO NOT limit your researching to these sites alone….they only give you part of the picture.

In order to achieve competence in the Unit: CUSADM08A Address copyright requirements you and your team members must answer 50% of the questions correctly. Winning teams are generously rewarded.

Happy Researching!!
Genie

PS: There are prizes to be won in this game as well as obtaining a mark in the unit.

Tuesday 27th May 2008

Folks I have decided to postpone tomorrows planned workshop (Javascript) until next week, to allow Project participants to continue working on their projects. At this stage, Thursdays workshops will go ahead this week (though I will discuss this with all of you and Genie tomorrow).

See you all tomorrow.

Thursday 22nd May 2008

Just a reminder that all scheduled workshops for Thursday have been canceled!

The program for Thursday will thus be:

• 9:30am - 10:00am: Group Meeting/Briefing (all students)
• 12:30pm - 1:00pm: Team Meeting
• 1:00pm - 1:45pm: Lunch
  
  
• 10am - 5pm: Those involved in the Re-design Project will work on the projects - NOTE: Each group is expected to present their Proposal and Mockup to Genie tomorrow - which implies that both items must be complete tomorrow. As a result Genie's Feasibility workshop will also be postponed.
  
• 10am - 5pm: Those NOT involved in the Re-design Project will work on their own projects/work

Please note:

At some point during the day I would like to spend an hour or two in an Open Forum with the continuing students from last year. The topic of discussion is totally open, so we can discuss/clarify anything that you feel needs discussion/clarification. Depending on availability this will take place in one of the call-off rooms.

I would like to spend the remainder of the day free to assist individuals/groups with their own/project work. If you feel you have nothing to do then I would assume you are a Web Guru and can answer any random web related question I can throw at you (!); however, if you need some guidance in what to do I might suggest:

1. Have you completed all of the HTML and CSS Challenges? http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/HTML_Challenges and http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/CSS_challenges
   
   
2. Have you installed XAMPP on your thumbdrive, and commenced any of the PHP Challenges (if you are doing beginners/advanced programming on Thursdays)? http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/PHP_challenges
   
   
3. Is all of the work you have completed to date in order and ready for presentation as evidence of your completing the modules?
   
   
4. Is all of your Multimedia modules work up to date?
   
   
5. Is all of your Client Interaction modules work up to date?
   
   
6. If you are involved in the Small Web Project, are you up to date with both Client Interaction and Technical requirements?
   
   
7. Have you read all of the Further Reading items posted on the Blog to date? If not it might be a good time to catch up on that - keeping in mind that reading is only half of learning ie: don't forget to try out any of the techniques or approached that may be discussed in the reading list. Setting up demo/test pages that illustrate certain techniques can also be added to your evidence!! Better still, applying any/all of those techniques in a website you are working on (ie: a 'real live' implementation) will constitute higher weighted evidence.

See you all on Thursday!

Tuesday 20th May 2008

Hi folks - just a reminder Andrew Stibbard will be our Guest Speaker today from 9.30 - 11.30am in the Barn. Andy will be presenting a workshop on Imagery and Typography in website mockups, which (having seen the final draft today) should tie in a number of aspects of Elke's, Genie's and my own workshops throughout last term and the current term.

Andy is an ex-BM TAFE Cert IV Webhead himself, having formally graduated (with High Distinction) only last week!! He has developed a number of websites for real clients over the years, and will be sharing his experience with the class on Tuesday.

I strongly recommend ALL current Cert IV students (whether continuing or not) attend this Guest workshop.

See you all in the morning!

PHP/MySQL - Database Normalisation

For those doing the advanced PHP workshops, we discussed Database Normalisation in class today. The Wikipedia write-up does go into great detail, though you may find the articles Further Reading links to be a bit clearer.

TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG

Please take the survey about the blog- your input would be highly regarded.
This may help us to resolve some of the issues about how to best use the class blog- or not, depending on survey results.
Thanks
Genie
Link for the survey is:

http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=959840