Smart Ideas for Incorporating Your SMARTboard™

Description

I used Camtasia audio editing software to create the podcast, "Smart Ideas for Incorporating Your SMARTboard™ into Your Classroom." This podcast is 5 minutes long and discusses multiple ideas for teachers wanting to use their SMARTboard™more effectively utilizing SMART Technologies' online resource database, SMART Exchange.

Challenges, Solutions, and Future Implications

The most difficult task of this project was recording the narrative and editing the recorded audio. For this project it appeared simpler to rerecord the narrative rather than try to meticulously edit it. However, it made me realize how difficult it must be to edit long spans of narrative.  Once I found the zoom buttons, editing went a lot quicker since I could zoom in to pinpoint and cut out an an "ummm" or a thump in the background. Another issue I had was trying to figure out why the mp3 playback sounded differently on my desktop speakers compared to my phone speakers. I adjusted the different audio files to levelize the recordings in an effort to improve playback. Seeing no significant difference, I eventually realized that my desktop speakers are not as high quality has I had hoped so I finalized the podcast and uploaded it to the U of A Comp server.

I felt a bit of personal satisfaction from not having to consult a help manual or online forum to troubleshoot any of my issues. With what little experience I have using Camtasia, I managed to maneuver through the software fairly intuitively and I would highly recommend the software to anyone who may be in the market for video/audio software. 

In the future, I will use Camtasia to produce more podcasts to use in developing our online nutrition training course and our SNAP-Ed social media efforts. This activity has reminded me how involved, yet simple and effective a podcast can be.

BIG Dreamweaver Project - Instructional Website

 

Description

I used a 2-column liquid template with a left sidebar, header and footer within the Dreamweaver software to create my website. Using the template provided the structure I wanted and enabled me to spend time experimenting with code within the template. The website I created will be used by U of A Cooperative Extension Service County Agents. From planning and development to delivery and evaluation to record keeping and reporting, agents will be able to use this instructional site to walk them through the process of conducting a SNAP-Ed program in their county.

Challenges, Solutions, and Future Implications

The most difficult task of this project was getting the header, body, and footer to display correctly and then figuring out how to layer text on top of them. I had to rearrange and rewrite some of the template code to make all of the elements work or appear properly, but I eventually figured out how to do that. Another thing I found challenging during this project in particular was the unexplained difference between the "live view" in Dreamweaver and how the pages appeared in an actual web browser. I never was able to figure out why it was happening, but I overcame the discrepancies by using just the web browser as my live view rather than the Dreamweaver viewer.

w3schools.com was most helpful when looking for code solutions and when trying to figure out how to place the text on top of the header and footer. Trial and error also played a big role in this web design because at times I wasn't exactly sure how some of the w3 advice would play out in my own project. This project taught me that trying new things can be challenging and frustrating and rewarding all at the same time and web pages can only be as smart as the individual coding them. 

In the future, I would like to experiment with building web forms. We have a need to evaluate our webpages and I think this would be a very beneficial tool for soliciting qualitative feedback from our visitors.