Do It Yourself (DIY) accelerated learning!!!!

I believe one of the best ways to learn Web project management, or to increase your knowledge, is to create an entire site yourself. Do everything from A to Z :the idea, the strategy, the costing, the design, the programming, the testing, and the updating. It doesn’t have to be a complicated site at all; it could revolve around a hobby or interest of yours. You will find you learn an awful lot about the challenges your web team members face, learn new terminology, see why some things take longer than others, learn the joys of cross-browser compatibility at first hand, and so on. All of this will make you better at communicating with your team and client, better at planning, and better at empathizing with your team members regarding the problems they face.
- Ashley Friedlein, “Web Project Management”

Group atmosphere or Aloneness!

When I refer to myself inner, I realize that I often prefer to be alone in conducting the assignment. However, the main reason is not clear for I myself, I think it refers to my previous learning. As I can see here, in Malaysia, students get used to discuss, argue, exchange their views, and talk over the courses and study subjects together. On the contrary, I never remember that I had such experience. In Iran, it is not common that the lecturers give the grouping assignment. Even if two students or more present a group project, usually it means that job related to just one of them. Probably, that’s the reason why Iranian athletes are more successful in singular, like wrestling and weight lifting not in team grouping such as football, basketball and so on.
Last semester, I experienced the first serious grouping assignment. I was with mieza and faza. It was great for me, but I am not sure they also have the same idea. I distinguished what easily tasks divide between us without any extra burden and what a beauty we covered our knowledge together.
Formerly, I could never trust anyone to do the assignment except myself. But during that experience, I realized my friends see the task with different view and they consider the other aspect of it.
Generally, there is a pleasant sensation that someone feels he or she belongs to a group, with a joint responsibility and the same aim. I suppose in grouping jobs the most important thing is finding the person who can match easily. In this way, demands of one person dissolve in all ideas. ‘I’ become a meaningless word and group and its properties born. Each person works according to the achievements of the group and finally success belongs to all.

Successful project management

Successful project management is about ensuring the right blend of diverse skill setsand cultures needed to produce a truly great web site. Bringing together, in one team, people with art and technology degrees can be difficult in having them understand each other’s point of view. The project manager must be a skilled translator between the creative push of “this is what we could do” against the technologist view of “this is what we can do,” especially if back-end legacy systems are involved.
- Andrew Bibby, Director of projects, Razorfish, USA

Time, Cost or Quality?

Fight the early battles to win the great victory
With pressure on time and cost reduction, it is, unfortunately, the third constant, quality, that can be sacrificed. One of the unending and difficult tasks for the web project manager is to fight for the time and money needed to do a good job. One thing that experience teaches you is that history will only judge you by your end product, and will forget the journey you had to go through to get there. E-business is, despite the hype, a performance-rated business like any other. Bear in mind that you will be judged, fairly or unfairly, by the results of the final site. Fight hard in early time and cost battles to gain the best chance of succeeding with the final quality of the product. Ironically, only by producing quality work will you be in a position to demand more money and set schedules.

Ashley Friedlein, Web Project Management

Principles of Web Design (Joel Sklar )- Part 1

Variables in Web Design Environment

1. Browser compatibility
2. Connection speed
3. Screen resolution
4. Operating system

Browser compatibility : As a web designer, has to test the work on different browsers.

Connection speed : Users do not anticipate waiting longer than 10 to 20 seconds. The solution can be working with the cache- is the browser's temprory storage area for web pages and images. The browser always tries to load images from the cache rather than downloading them again from the web.

Screen resolution : The design has to code for multiple screen resolution- is the width and height of the computer screen in pixels. It's not our control. We have Fixed Design, Flexible Design, and Centered Design.

Operating System: The least control.

Web Site Design Principles

Design for the computer media : Destination is a computer monitor not the printed page. The interface called Look & Feel. The look and feel is both the way our web site work and the personality it conveys to the user.

Make the portable design : Web site design must be portable and accessible by users who have different platforms. The page can contain a link informing users that they must use an updated browser to view.

Design for low bandwidth: The pages have to accessible at a variety of connection speeds.

Easy access to information : How easily users can access the web content. The goal is to organize our content andd present it as a meaningful set of information.

An explanation of web 2.0 tools. What's your feeling!?

oh ...my GOD!
Let me say something. Before this when I was in Iran, around 8 years ago I attended in NLP( Neuro-Linguistic programming) class which I learnt that lack of information always comes with nervousness. Having information comes with relaxation. All of us can remember when we were child at school, when we were ready in some subjects , we wanted to show ourselves to the teacher if not we were nervouse that don't the teacher ever ask a question us.
But now I want to say lack of information comes with relaxation!!! Yes. It's true. When you know nothing you can sleep well, if not you will be worried. If you know there are a lot of items in education fields, how can you be relax. Actually there isn't any limitation for technology in education. When you learn something you have to learn another newer thing.Continue until....without any end. Have you ever think if you learn which item, you will be expert in educational technology????

Summary of the articale- 'Changing learning and teaching relationship in the educational technology landscape '

Ascilite 2008 Melbourne
Changing learning and teaching relationship in the educational technology landscape

By : Mary Low O’Sullivan & Gayani Samarawickrema

What is web x.0?

Actually when I was looking for opportunity to know about web2.0, suddenly I heard 'web3.0' and'web4.0', during the 'Web-based Multimedia Development' class!Oh...My GOD. I don't know any thing about the developments of technology! When I want to start knowing about web2.0, my lecturer tells about web3.0 and 4. Sometimes I suppose how many years I have to study to feel ok, 5 year, 10 year? Do I have enough time?

Before this all the using of the Internet have been limited to surf the net. As Dr.Zaidatun explaiend, it was just "read-only web" . In that time, there was no any interaction. People just browse the pages to get information, not any permission to change, or even suggestion.It can be the simple definition of web1.0.

Now, we are facing to almost a new definition. Web2.0, it excatly refers to interaction. As the lecturer mentioned it can be defined "read-write" web . As an illustration, nowadays people can share their ideas, thinkings , resources and they can also put comments and so on.

what about web3.0? web2.0 provides all the tools in order to use of the resource as sharing, arguing and so on. what will be the anticipation about web3.0? According to explanation of Dr. zaidatun it can be the "read-write-execute" web. If have not mistake it refers to the tools of web that users no need to install any thing. just directly run.

Is there any exact definition for web4.0? Actually I don't know the meaning of web 4.0, but according to wikipedia it can be described: "A dynamic, mutating mashup of time and dimensions both web-based and otherwise, creating an eternally minable data model of the world past, present and future. Evolving beyond the cognitive ability of mankind into an uncontrollable spasmic orgy of over-communication ".

In addition, Nova Spivack has interesting labels for all webx.0 (webx.o is my own term!)
Web1.0 -> "Worldwide Web"
Web2.0 -> "Social Web"
Web3.0 -> "Semantic Web"
Web4.0 -> "Intelligent Web".

Top 10 tools for learning in 2008 by Jane Hart

1. Delicious -> Social bookmarking tool more info
2. Firefox -> Web browser with extensions more info
3. Google Reader -> RSS reader more info more info
4. Skype -> Instant messenger and voice call tool more info
5. WordPress -> Blogging tool more info
6. Google Search -> Web search tool more info
7. Google Docs -> Office suite more info
8. PowerPoint -> Presentation software more info
9. Moodle -> Course management system more info
10. Blogger -> Blogging tool more info
    
    
    

My mind is exploding.....

During the second session of 'web-based multimedia development' I faced to a new terminology: 'semantic web'. Actually befor this I saw that, but I didn't know the exact meaning. I became eager to know about it. I searched in Net and also refered to several books-Semantic Web : concepts, technologies and applications, Semantic web : revolutionizing knowledge discovery in the life sciences, and Semantic web : technologies : trends and research in ontology-based systems. I could just have a look and I got a headache.... Oh, technology is developed beyond my mind. I cannot imagine ...

"The Semantic Web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which the semantics of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content." (wikipedia)

According to (Karin K.Breitman, Marco Antonio, Walter Truszkowski, 2007) "the semantic content is the meaning of the information in a web page, is coded in a way that is accessible to human beings alone."

I'm not sure, but as I understood, semantic web focuses on the meaning of the information. As an illustartion, before this when we searched 'flower', the results were just about the flower itself, but now, with the semantic web technology the result will cover all aspects of 'flower' such as color, smell, type, and other peroperties.