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.

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!

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!