An Hour of Code

This has been an incredible week of code. Since I am in Computer Science I, this has been a review of everything I have done. Every program is extremely fun, creative, and challenging. During the Hour of Code, you can earn up to 27 trophies and, if you reach that amount, you receive a prize. At the point the picture was taken, I was at about 13 trophies out of 27. I have been able to work fast because I have seen this type of programming before in Scratch but, for anyone who has not tried code, this would be an excellent introduction for them. This week of code has made my mind constantly work through the problems and think. Being a high school student, that is really healthy for me! The coding was colorful blocks that you can put together like puzzle pieces. Anyone would be able to do these programs. I had no much fun that I went back to programs for fourth through eighth grade when I ran out of beginner programs on the first day! Today, I plan on going home to finish my 27 trophies to receive my $10 Itunes gift card!

Finding Nemo Google Site

The post prior to this one describes my Finding Nemo website using Blogger. As an introduction to Google sites, my class decided, using the same fictional character, to remake our website. I had no trouble with the background picture this time around because my picture from the Blogger website fit perfectly. I had never used Google sites before so trying to navigate around my own website was a nightmare. I did not have a problem creating pages and placing them as tabs at the top of the screen but I did struggle trying to get my pages to display as links on the left side of my page. Due to my limited knowledge of Google sites, my website's layout was not as pretty or organized as my Blogger website. My favorite part of this website was adding Disney's Finding Nemo logo in the top left corner of my website. With the help of Google, I was able to easily find a logo and put it into my website. I was really happy with the themes Google sites provided and was able to explore them and find the one that fit my website the best. I experimented with tables on my Quotes page and I'm still not sure if I'm happy with it or not. In summary, I really enjoy Google sites. With more practice, I am confident I could create a fantastic site. The theme, colors and fonts in Google sites are easy to learn but the layout and gadgets of Google sites will be a challenge for me for a while.

Finding Nemo Web Page

Creating this blog for the movie Finding Nemo was quite the feat. No matter how silly it may sound, I absolutely love this website and it's not just because I'm a fan. There was so much detail and time put into this website and I could type about it for hours. My first challenge, similar to my Summertime page, was to find a background picture I was happy with. To fit these standards, the picture had to mostly fill the whole page. I absolutely hate when a background picture tiles. DeGraeve.com was an extremely helpful tool while making the website because, at first, I could not find text colors I was happy with. Once I was able to overcome the struggle of colors and formatting, the fun began. As a huge Finding Nemo fan, making this website was most likely one of the best projects I have ever done in school. I did have trouble finding pictures due to blocked websites but Disney did not fail me. For the Friends and Family page, each photo is the same and it's like I had a Finding Nemo photo shoot and I got those pictures straight from the Disney website. When it came to the Blog Archive, all I had to do was go to layouts and remove it. When it came to removing text at the bottom of my page, I actually had to go into the code of the website and remove it. I obviously did not know where or what to look for in the code and was required to Google search it. I had no trouble making a post for each of the tabs and found it easy to format things to my liking. I used Pixlr to create an image for the quotes page that included part of the quote in the picture with the character. I learned to use text boxes, how to place them, how to change text color, and how to change font color. I had another classmate show me how to use part of the layout elements to display a small picture of Finding Nemo on the tab of my website. Making this website was an incredible and creative experience and I am very excited to move on and learn new things in my web design class!

Banner on Pixlr

Using a free tool called Pixlr, I was able to create a banner. First, I Youtube searched a Pixlr tutorial creating banners. I found a video by a Youtube user who used a cloud and astronaut image for their banner. I used Creative Commons to find a picture of clouds and a picture of a bird. Then, while following the video, I created various layers in order to get the bird on my cloud banner. I then added text, changed the font, the color, and the size. I used layer effects to then change the shadow of the text. I am very happy I learned how to make a banner and I hope to edit/create more images on Pixlr.

Summertime

I continued to reinforce my web design skills by making another page for a song. The song, Summertime by My Chemical Romance, allowed me to make an interesting and fun page. The background photo is the album cover and the picture included is the back of the album cover. The lyrics, which are properly formatted by stanza, has a new font color for every first word of each stanza. The title is the song name and band, all one color, and italicized. One of my major struggles during this page was finding a background photo that I was satisfied with. The picture either repeated or looked very blurry and I was extremely unhappy. In addition, it didn't help that I also missed a day of class and fell behind. I am not as happy with this page as I was with Imagine, but, I am still very proud of the work I produced in the time I had.

Color Table

Using my knowledge of tables, I created a table and added color based on the picture of the cupcake in the center. I used DeGraeve.com as well as Color Hunter to choose and place the background colors in the eight surrounding cells. Finally, I added a mint green, bolded and italicized title as well as a background image for creativity!

Imagine

While creating the page for John Lennon's "Imagine," I was able to reinforce the web design skills introduced to me over the past few weeks. When I first began making my page, I had to review how to add a background picture. I continued on my webpage and had no trouble changing the font size or color while creating my page. In addition, I did not need to review italics, bolding, or underlining. I was able to properly use spacing and breaks in order to keep the lyrics in stanzas. I did have to go back and review how to add a link and how to add a picture. This was also the first time I began working on link, alink, and vlink. I had trouble with them for a short amount of time, but was eventually able to work through it. I honestly enjoyed creating this page and I am very proud of the result.