Evaluating Information on the Internet

I'm certain that everyone is excited that Spring Break is here and has some awesome plans.  Personally, I still have to work . . . at least until next Thursday.  Then next Friday, meand some of my karate students are heading down to Alexandria, Louisiana for three day.  I am teaching some close quarters combat seminars at a martial arts school there.  The Head Instructor is another of my students.  In the real world he is a pharmacist.  While we are there, his wife has her season opener Saturday night, so we are planning on going to watch her roller derby game.

In class this Thusday, Eric Hicks, Hayden Belgavy, and Symphonie Privett gave their presentation to our class over the subject of "Evaluating Information On the Internet." Ericd started out speaking about Youtube. I think anyone that has anything to do with computers and the internet have visited Youtube.  I have a couple of videos on there and even use it to train people in other parts of the country and even other countries in the martial arts. It is a great way to share things that just can't be communicated via a phone line. Kim and I also intend to host the videos for our website on Youtube and then provide links to it.  Hayden Balgavy then presented information about Google and how it has become such a dominant presence on the internet.  Guess some people are just resistant to change.  I still predominantly use Yahoo! Finally Harmony Privett presented on Wikipedia.  Listening to her, I actually thought that as the president of the All Okinawan OzarkMountain Karate Association, I might want to consider getting on Wikipedia and making a few entries concerning my association!  Overall, the presentation Thursday was very informative and got me thinking about ways to utilize these forms of media with our website.

That's it for this week.  Hope everyone has a fun Spring Break.  BE SAFE!



Guest Speaker Doug Criss

Dr. Zeng introduces guest speaker Diouglas Criss

This Thursday in Internet Communications class, we had a special guest speaker.  It was unfortaunate that the majority of our class chose not to attend and missed out on this interesting opportunity. 

Guest speaker Doug Criss is a copy editor and web editor for CNN and works out of the famous CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia.  Criss is an ASU alum that has worked for CNN for two years.  He works on the CNN Homepage as an editor  and also is responsible for posting tweets and notifications to the CNN Breaking News App. He stated that in this age of technology that before long the CNN website will reach more viewers and be the top earner, even over CNN on television. 

After showing those in attendance the CNN website and others that he is involved with, Criss answered questions.  During this period he shared that when breaking news happens Twitter updates were the number one prioirty, followed by the CNN App and finally the website.  HE also gave advise telling future professional to be prepared to relocate.  Criss also boasted on the ASU Radio-TV and Journalism programs stating "Everything that you need, you will get right here. ASU will prepare you to compete in any market."

Internet Communications Class

Dreamweaver CS5 Logo
(what I have on my laptop)

Things are starting to roll in our internet communications class now.  I am getting excited to see the planning and begining development of our website coming into place. One of the whole reasons I took this class in the first place was because once I finished this class I would be able to make and maintain a website for my martial arts association, The All Okinawan Ozark Mountain Karate Association.  I had no idea thatDr. Zeng would let me actually make it as part of class and for a grade.

This week in class, we had to submit our proposal in essay form to Dr. Zeng.  My partner Kim, originally sent me a proposal for my review a week ago or so, and it was a great foundation to startbuilding on.  She had some great ideas and I just added a few ideas to it.  Everything has been so hectic for me this week with school and work. I would have to say this week was the most busy and sleep deprived I have had since starting back to school. Ihad serious homework and/or projects due in pretty much all my classes, and have gotten maybe 2-3 hours of sleep every night since Sunday. On top of all that, I have been having to prepare for a visit from legislative auditors and going through 90 applications for a job I must hire for at work on top of my regular job duties.  So when Kim asked about her writing the essay for our propsal, I was ecstatic, andmore than glad to let her. Of course, I had to pull my own weight in this project, and as each of you in class have seen, that is a LOT of weight for me to be pulling!  So I worked on out story board to turn in with the proposal.  I chose a green posterboard to put it on because that is one of the colors of the AOOMKA logo, so we will be using tht as one of the colors of our website.  I also used Excel to make the individual screen shots that I put on the posterboard. I'm pretty good with Excel and thought I could use that to make it look cleaner and give more detail inside the screen shots.  Overall, I felt like the storyboard turned out pretty good. Now, on to the building of the actual site!