May 4th-May 8th

15/5’s

This is the final week of the course and in typical fashion our site had a security breach and more corruption issues. I was mortified to learn that the mobile site for MTVT was taken over by a  Russian Porn Site. Kim has been extremely helpful in speaking with representative from blue host trying to troubleshoot the problem.  I am a bit relieved that the normal internet version is not experiencing these issues. We met as a team on Sunday for about an hour to discuss the remaining loose ends, the project documentation, and a few questions we had for Dr. Mims.

The program Maleware was purchased to eradicate the site issues unfortunately it did not work. Unfortunately, Dr. Mims had to purchase Site Doctor a $270 Program to clear out any threats.  Hopefully, this will rectify the problem. We were informed that the site will be down for a few days. I was shocked to learn how common this for Wordpress.  Especially, with the wordpress plug-ins.  Its just frustrating that someone would do this to an educational site. In any event,   I’m thankful this happened before Dr. Mims presented the site to room full of educators. That would have been really bad!

This week we focused on completing the testimonials videos.  I spent about three hours making a screencast using screen flow for my testimonial.  I also uploaded more teacher testimonial videos. Rick also had teachers submit testimonials that were uploaded to YouTube so that I could embed them into to the MTVT site. Kim also has submitted teacher and student testimonials. Since the site is down I will have to add these next week. Rick contacted Dr. Mims to get the final sign off on the project,  which we hope to have completed by Thursday (since in the last day of class).

I really enjoyed this class.  I think I have also developed an interest in instructional design. Once I complete this degree, I really would like to pursue this aspect of the degree or even build/create online courses or freelance for companies.

Wordpress was all trial and error and self teaching.  As I reflect on the this project, it is clear that having a site document all our work in one place is a great idea.  I am sure I will refer to this later on and even after graduation.  I learned so much this semester ( granted it was extremely time consuming dealing with the trial and error of Wordpress ) and found it extremely rewarding. I really enjoy the hands on approach to actually creating a final product.  I can write numerous papers but until I actually get first hand experience you don’t develop quite the same knowledge or appreciate.

My plan of action for the upcoming week is to add the testimonial videos and catch up on all my tv shows and sleep!

April 26th-May3rd

15/5’s 

April 26th-May3rd

This week we ran into some issues with Wordpress. First, Dr. Mims received an email that said Code Canyon (a plug-in I had purchased for the site) had a virus.  Around that same time, Kim found that Max Buttons (a plug-in she purchased) was corrupted.  In order to correct the corrupted file and eradicate the virus we had to contact Bluehost and they deactivated all of the plug-ins so that all that remained was the HTML coding.  This was not the solution we were looking for.  

Fortunately, with some ingenuity and a little luck,  the work was retrieved when Kim updated the plug-ins.  The issues was the plug in haven't been updating in over a year which caused some glitches in the system. Kim also removed the plug-ins we were not using. Since we began working on the site we have added and deleted numerous plug-ins. I still consider visual composer one of my favorite plug-ins.  It is an extremely user friendly plug-in that once you become confident and learn the ins and outs it is easy to use. The only issue I am having with this particular plug-in at the moment ( since the update) is that  visual composer can only be used through backend coding (or html).  I had to teach myself HTML in order to fix a lot of the issues with the frontend of visual composer.   My only concern is that we don’t lose what we created and I can finish off the project using the backend editor.

We met on Wednesday of this week for an hour and Dr. Weaver joined our group to discuss the showcase and hold our exit interview. We also discussed delegating out tasks to complete by next Wednesday.

I created two screencasts of testimonial interviews for using thinking routines that focused on Compass Points and Wordpress. I find that each time I use screenflow to create a screencast I learn something new.    Screenflow has numerous capabilities.  I would love to go to a training on screenflow.  In fact, once I get some free time I’m going to research what other options this program offers.   I also had to play with the color format since the site was changed to the old green after the updates.  There are numerous changes we need to make since we lost everything and the plug-ins were deactivated.  There are also widgets on the side of each page that need to be changed.

I also created more tabs for the “thinking routines in action” where I will be embedding teacher testimonials.  Our goal was to have a total of 10 videos by the end of this semester and I think it is possible to achieve this goal.  

This week we are tying up loose ends.  I created an updated treatment report that included the changes we made to the website.  These changes included: removing the name on the Edtech Tools  and updating the sites formatting; Module 2 name change from share exemplar to  creating and share exemplar lesson plans; as well as the updated content and images.  We also  added to the project evaluation summary ( which is a recap of the project and lessons learned).

We will be completing the treatment report, evaluation report and project evaluation to be submitted on Sunday.   

The next week will consist of finding teachers to participate in the testimonials, as well as adding teacher student testimonials to the site. These testimonials will be embedded in two places,the lesson plan and the tab folders for thinking routines in action.