Thanksgiving 101 and Beyond

Our last class was Thursday, December 3rd. We looked at Yahoo! Groups, which is comparable to a blog with some perhaps limited graphic features. We also looked at Yahoo! Music, and other online music providers such as Pandora. Finally we learned about both Yahoo!'s and Google's chat features. We had a nice break for Thanksgiving, and I hope you enjoyed yours. I had a nice time eating lots of Turkey, getting stuffed on stuffing, and relaxing! That being said, the time is now short, and we have only a few more classes until we're out for winter intersession. As I mentioned in class, because of the economic times Gavilan will not hold winter intersession classes. That means that our last class will be December 17th, and we will not return until February 4th! For now, I'll see you in our next class, this Thursday December 10.
Until next time!

The Pre-Thanksgiving Class Preview

We have only one more class, this Thursday, November, 19th, and then we'll be off next week because of Thanksgiving break! The next EXT class after this Thursday would be next week, but GUSD will be closed November 25, 26, and 27th. That means that we'll be back December 3rd, for our Exploring The Web class. Here's a tentative preview of what we'll be covering in class this Thursday...

Part 1 - Blogger Review

• Publishing a post on your blog with an image added.
• Leaving a comment on one of the latest posts on the class blog, ETW.
  
• Adding yourself as a follower of the class blog, ETW, if you haven't already.
• Leaving a question on the post question area of the class blog, ETW.
• Answering the poll on the class blog, ETW, if you haven't already.
• Adding a gadget to your blog, using the Layout.

Part 2 - Yahoo! Mail

• Signing Up for a Yahoo! Mail email account.
• Navigating the Yahoo! Mail email environment.
  
• Adding your Yahoo! Mail account username to your Google account. 

So, that's the plan. Hopefully, we'll be able to get through it and head into the break well versed in emailing and blogging, and I'll hear from you through an email, and see some you do some blogging. Keep in mind that you can try some of these assignments on your own ahead of time, and then go over them in class; that's a great way to reinforce what you're learning!

Until next time! 

Images Are Us!

First things first. Our last class was Thursday, November 12th, and unfortunately, we didn't get to Yahoo! Mail as hoped for. Time, as always, went by faster than anticipated, so we saved Yahoo! Mail for the next lesson.

We spent the first part of class reviewing Accounts (Google's and Yahoo!'s), and the various services/products that are available when you sign up for one. We also spent time talking about the account services Picasa Web Albums and Flickr, and how they're integrated and used with Google and Yahoo!. The class then moved on to working on our blogs.

Go Go Gadgets!

Today class, Thursday, November 5, was a very enlightening class! We continued to work on our two main subjects, blogs and email, and we went over a lot of information. I was pleased to see that most the class is already much more comfortable using Gmail, and also navigating and using the class blog (Exploring The Web).

Email Agendas Revisited

Ok, the time has grown short, so let's see if I can't get us up to date in this post, and at least leave a teaser of what's to come! I've been editing the previous posts on our ETW blog, and I've tried to clarify the explanations and step by step examples. It took some time but I hope they're more clear. On to the very recent past, Thursday, October 29th, and the email lessons we've had in class, so here we go...

Email Agendas (Almost)

We've gone through two classes since the last post, classes on Thursday, October 22, and 29, and we are now into the month of November! October went by fast, and we have a lot to learn! We moved away from blogs toward the end of the month, and finished talking primarily about email, but before I get to that...

Here's a Recap...

The Blog Posting Past and The Upcoming Email Agenda

 Last class was Thursday, October 15, and the main topic was blog settings, specifically publishing posts. After everyone signed in to their blogs, we talked about the area you immediately see, which Blogger calls the Dashboard. We spent some time learning about the Dashboard, so...

A Good Day for Blogging

This is a nice day for learning about blogs! Last Tuesday was very wet, but today the sun is shining. I'm enjoying the day! This is an example of a blog post. This one is a text message with an image added. Also, click on the video to watch instructions on navigating the Blogger Dashboard!

E and B Review In Brief

The current topics can be broken into two parts:

1.) Email.
2.) Blogs.


1.) Email:
We talked about email use with Google, including:
> Creating an email account with Google (Gmail).
> Logging in to Google's Gmail accounts.
> Opening email messages received in the Inbox.
> Replying to email messages that have been read.

2.) Blogs:
We learned about blog use with Google, including:
> Creating a blog account with Google (Blogger).
> Logging in to Google's Blogger accounts.
> Viewing your blog from your Blogger account Dashboard.
> Publishing a blog post from your Dashboard.

There was more (such as uploading pictures to our blogs), but those were the two main topics. More to come on the next post, as well as a preview of the next class!
Cheers!

Email and Blog Review - Part 2

This post covers some other aspects of what we did in class October 8, 2009.
Besides creating an email account with Google, we also signed up with Google's service called "Blogger," to create our own blogs. (To review how to log in to your Google email account, scroll down and read the previous post "Email and Blog Review - Part 1." )
We practiced getting to our blogs, selecting a blog style from the templates they provide, writing our first post and publishing it onto our blog, as well as uploading a picture to publish onto our blog. It was a fun class!

Email and Blog Review - Part 1

Today was a great day of class! With a lot to learn about blogging, (notice how we even use it as a verb), we spent most of the class working on blogs. However, we started with a review of email. Since we're using the program Blogger to create our blogs, we have to have a Google email account (called Gmail). (Blogger is owned by Google, so your account works for both.)


Here are step by step instructions on logging in to Gmail...


Logging in to your Google email account (Gmail):

1.) Type "http://www.google.com" in the address bar at the top of the web browser. Hit "enter" on your keyboard.

2.) At the Google search engine, left-click on the "Gmail" link in the upper center/left of the page.

3.) At the Google account log in page, type in your username and password. Hit enter on your keyboard.

4.) This will take you to your email "Inbox." This is where you receive your emails that people send you. Left-click on the name of one of the emails to open and read it!


At our "Inbox", there were a couple emailed assignments I had sent everyone in the class. The first was to reply to the email by left-clicking the "reply" button, then typing a brief message, and left-clicking "send." The second assignment was to visit the class blog, "Exploring The Web," and leave a comment. We finished that assignment in class, and then worked on our individual blogs.

I'll give you step by step instructions for logging in to your own blog with my next post!

ETW..Up Till Now!

Today was our first class day in October! We're already into our second month in the Exploring The Web class of the Fall 2009 semester! It was our second day of learning about creating a blog using a blog hosting service offered by Google (called Blogger).

We started our class asking very basic questions. What is the internet? How did it start? What is the web? What is a web browser? After discussing these questions, we began to learn about the web browser we're using for our class, Microsoft Internet Explorer (Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Opera are some others).

We also talked about different types of websites, including search engines (Yahoo!, Google, Bing, Ask, etc.), metasearch engines (Dogpile, Clusty, Mamma, Metacrawler, etc.), and ecommerce sites (ebay, craigslist, etc.).

Our last few classes have focused on free email accounts with Google (called Gmail), and creating our own blogs using Blogger. Before we started we talked about what email is (short for electronic mail), and what a blog is (short for weblog).

Email is a type of message transfer, used to send messages through the internet. Email is text heavy; you can send and recieve text messages and documents, and some images.

A blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual person, for commentary or news on a particular subject, or as a kind of personal online journal or diary. A blog is both text and image heavy; you can post messages, pictures, and other media on a blog.

This is the blog for our class, I hope you enjoy it, and continue to experiment with your own!
Until next time...

Our First Entry

This is the first blog entry of the Exploring The Web class of Fall 2009! I hope we learn a lot and have a lot of fun! Please click on the video link for some instruction on how to create a blog using Blogger!